The Stormy Summer of 2017 in the Ports of the Occupied Crimea: "Foreign Crimean Grain Fleet" and… Ukrainian Reloaders

The Stormy Summer of 2017 in the Ports of the Occupied Crimea: "Foreign Crimean Grain Fleet" and… Ukrainian Reloaders

28 September 2017

Part 2

Andrii Klymenko

Chief Editor BlackSeaNews

expert, Chairman of the Board, "Maidan of Foreign Affairs" Foundation

Translated by Tetyana Puchkova

The Maidan of Foreign Affairs and BlackSeaNews monitoring center continues presenting the results of its ongoing monitoring of the violations of the Ukrainian and international sanctions against the Russian-occupied Crimea by the sea vessels.

Below, we offer for your attention the main trends and specifics of the situation between June 1 - August 31, 2017, as well as the generalized data for 2017.

The main feature of the summer of 2017 is the uncommon before massive attraction of foreign – non RF - vessels for transportation from the ports of Crimea.

We have been repeatedly noting that Russia has a significant shortage of the river-sea type vessels. The shortage has considerably increased further after the Crimean occupation, especially after the complete blockade of commodities from mainland Ukraine.

In the summer of 2017, via their maritime brokers, the occupying authorities of Crimea turned to shipowners of Turkey, Romania, Lebanon, Egypt, and Greece with export orders for the large volumes of Crimean grain.

The reason was the record in the last eight years grain harvest in Crimea: due to favorable weather conditions, the occupied peninsula harvested 1.7 million tons instead of the typical 1.5 million. That led to the vigorous attempts to facilitate grain export, as the storage capacity of Crimean elevators was insufficient.

Simultaneously, for the first time during the occupation, we observed foreign ships being used for the shuttle transportationof grain from the terminals of Sevastopol and Kerch to the two transshipment areas (see map):

(1) the Kerch Strait in the water area of ​​the Port Kavkaz; the official name is Anchorage (raid transshipment area, raiding berth) No. 451;

(2) the area of ​​unofficial raiding transshipment (so-called "Tortuga") in 12 miles, that is 22 km south of the Kerch Strait outside the territorial waters of Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

In the summer of 2017, 33 vessels of Russian shipowners and almost an equal number - 29 - belonging to shipowners from other countries worked at the Crimean ports, excluding active vessels permanently based in Crimea, mainly ferries, and repair and maintenance ships.

That non-standard situation had led to the fact that during the summer months of 2017, for the first time since the beginning of 2015, the number and share of foreign, non-RF, infringing ships began to grow.

To see what that "shuttle" activity looks like in practice, let’s take one of the most well-known offenders, the Romanian cargo ship NADALINA (IMO: 8215754, Sierra Leone flag, the shipowner and the operator RUAD MARINE SERVICES SRL 3rd Floor, Bulevardul Mamaia 122, 900673 Constanta, Romania) as a case study.

07.05.17 - arrived at the grain terminal of the Kerch Sea Fishery Port (KSFP) from the transshipment area and reloaded to the bulk carrier.

10.07. 17 - returned to the Kerch Merchant Marine Port (KMMP), loaded 4200 tons of barley and on 13.07.17 went to the transshipment area.

15.07.17 - after unloading grain to the bulk carrier, went to Sevastopol, took a load of grain and again went to the transshipment area south of the Kerch Strait, dumping the load on a bulk carrier there.

27.07.17 - arrived at the KSFP again, loaded 4000 tons of peas and on 01.08.17 set off for the transshipment area, where later unloaded.

03.08.17 - returned to the KMMP, loaded 4000 tons of peas again, and on 7.08.17, left for Feodosia

08.08.17 - arrived to Feodosia, took an additional cargo and on 18.08.17 set off for Tripoli (Lebanon)

All in all, in the summer of 2017, the "foreign Crimean grain fleet" included 20 vessels. The distribution on the basis of the country of shipowner’s registration is as follows:

* The above numbers of ships owned by the Turkish and Romanian shipowners' have a special trait: in April-May 2017, two well-known Romanian violators ADNAN H (IMO: 8215649) and ANDA (IMO: 8027638) were allegedly sold to a Turkish owner. Allegedly, because the routes have not changed and there are also other peculiarities that we won’t disclosed. We therefore, assume that sale to be fake and both vessels remaining under the control of the Romanian company. If that is the case, with 7 vessels, Romania would rank 1 in this rating.

Thus, of the 33 Russian-owned vessels, only 7 transported grain. The remaining 26 were engaged in delivering various cargoes to the peninsula, mainly rubble and sand, for the construction of the Kerch Bridge and the Tavrida freeway that will serve the bridge traffic. Meanwhile, of the 29 vessels owned by shipowners from other countries, 20 serviced the Crimean grain exports.

So, ultimately, the "foreign Crimean grain fleet" has enabled the aggressor state to proceed with the construction of infrastructure in the occupied Crimea without any distractions for grain and other exports.

The Summer 2017 Traits:the Greek Return to Crimea for Grain

The JAMILEH dry cargo ship (foreground) of the NEREIDE MARINE SA, Piraeus, Greece, at a Sevastopol anchorage before arriving to the Avlita grain terminal on July 17, 2017.)

In the summer of 2017, vessels owned by shipowners from an EU and NATO member Greece returned to the ports of the occupied Crimea.

We would like to remind the readers that in 2014, of 144 infringing ships, 20, or13.9%, were Greek. In 2015, their number and ratio decreased to 5 (3.1%) of the total number of 162 offenders and in 2016 dropped to only 2 vessels out of 162 (1.2%).

For the first half of 2017, Greek ships were not there either. But in mid-June 2017, 3 Greek ships began the prohibited grain export to the EU from Crimea. Two of them had already been blacklisted for the 2014 offenses, but why the NEREIDE MARINE SA company (Piraeus, Greece) decided to jeopardize the previously “clean” JAMILEH ship, remains unclear.

In our opinion, the resumption the Greek ships’ calls to the Crimean ports under the flags of other countries two years after their termination, testify to the attempts of the Greek shipowners to test the reaction of Ukraine and EU structures.

Sevastopol:
15.07.17 - anchorage, from Greece, under loading. When passing Bosphorus declared route for Oktyabrsk, later Yuzhniy and Kavkaz, on 25.07.17 left for the Avlita grain terminal’s moore #21 for Tartus with 8600 tons of grain. Both in and on exit from the port had the AIS turned off.

The Summer 2017 Traits:
Participation of the Odessa Bulk Carriers
in the Transshipment of the Crimean Grain

Even though it pains us to say this, we have to...

According to our data, which, incidentally, coincides with the observations of our peers, the Mirotvorets and Infonapalm volunteers, who published a detailed report on that, in the summer and early September 2017, 2 and 1 Ukrainian bulkers-reloaders, respectively, participated in facilitating the export of Crimean grain from the occupied peninsula. It should be noted that our colleagues managed to organize a round-the-clock observation for this.

These bulk carriers were on the transshipment anchorage in the territorial waters of the Russian Federation - at the moor #451. They took a Crimean grain cargo from at least 3 ships that had arrived from Sevastopol and Kerch and reloaded the grain on other bulkers ...

This is what the operation looks like: in the middle is f the Odessa bulk carrier-reloader SVYATOY PYOTR, on the left - a small dry cargo carrier unrelated to Crimea and on the right - a large bulk carrier accumulating cargo before the trip

Indeed, the Odessa ships did not enter the occupied territory, but during the cargo loading, the captains certainly saw that they were accepting export from the occupied Crimea ... While we cannot state at this point whether the ships have violated the legislation of Ukraine, they most certainly did the European and American sanctions.

This is what Odessa bulker AFINA looks like:

And this is Odessa bulker ALINA:

The table below shows the details of these bulk carriers and the vessels they accepted the Crimean cargo from.

We very much hope that our friends - the patriotic Odessa maritime community - will clearly explain to their colleagues where they can and cannot conduct “business as usual...”

The monitoring of the violations of international sanctions against Russia and the legal regime of the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea is supported by the European program initiative of the "Renaissance" International Fund. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the position of the position of the "Renaissance" International Fund.

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BSNews expresses gratitude to the ShippingExplorer
company for the opportunity to use its special software, as well as to all the volunteers
who have sent us information for the Black List project.